


Walls Fall Down

by Daylight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-20
Updated: 2010-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 01:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daylight/pseuds/Daylight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angel gazed once more at the rubble surrounding him. "I think a building fell on me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls Fall Down

Something was making a noise, high pitch, repetitive and electronic.

A ringing.

A telephone ring.

His cell phone was ringing.

Castiel began reaching automatically for the pocket that contained the phone only to find his right arm didn't want to move. He tried moving it again and was surprised by a sudden spike of pain. Focusing his thoughts on the limb, he realized that one of the bones was broken, but couldn't recall how it had become so. He furrowed his forehead and decided he really should open his eyes. Trying to remember when or why he had shut them, he finally lifted his eyelids.

The first thing he saw was the stars. It was night, but that didn't matter to the angel who could see his surroundings clearly even in the darkness, at least as clearly as he could from where he lay on the ground. Debris surrounded him, broken slabs of concrete wall, bits of pipe and metal beams. A particular piece of cracked concrete rested across his legs. Blood was seeping through his suit and trench coat.

He wondered why he didn't feel any pain. The second after that thought he could suddenly feel every ache from his head to his toes. The sensation overwhelmed him and for a moment he became lost unable to think or even remember who he was. He dove deep into himself until he found his true self, his grace. But even that was weak and tired. He used what he could to push outward into his human body and the pain slowly began to dull down. It wasn't much, but he could think clearly again.

He tried to recall what had happened. He wasn't used to this, foggy memories and sluggish thoughts. There had been a battle. Angels and demons. He'd come to find what the demons were up to and stop them. A squadron of angels had arrived and had helped defeat the demons only to turn around and go after him. Apparently, he was still on the angels' shit list.

Castiel shook his head. He had to stop picking up Dean's mannerisms.

Dean... The telephone had stopped ringing, but that must have been Dean. Only three people had his number, but of those three, Dean was the one who usually called. He was supposed to meet up with Dean this morning. Or was it yesterday morning? He must have been unconscious. He wasn't used to such breaks in consciousness. It had happened so few times. The first had been when he was dead.

His cell began ringing again. This time he reached with his left arm. Aching muscles pulled against painful scrapes and bruises as he grabbed the phone out of his trench coat.

"Dean," he said as he flipped it open, his voice even hoarser than usual.

"Where the hell are you, Cas?" Dean demanded in lieu of a greeting.

"Utah," replied the angel after a moment's thought.

"Utah?"

"Yes."

He could hear the hunter growl on the other end of the line. "You were supposed to meet up with us in Montana ten hours ago. You said you'd help with this case."

"I'm sorry. I…" Castiel swallowed his chest feeling heavy. "I was otherwise occupied."

"I've called you a dozen times and you didn't answer," exclaimed Dean. "What were you doing? Searching for God in Antarctica? You couldn't leave a message or drop in for a few seconds to tell us you were busy? You don't even have voicemail. I wasn't able to leave you a message telling you what a…"

His rant was cut off and a sound of scuffling indicated the phone had changed owners.

"Sorry about that, Cas," said Sam. "He's just been worried about you."

Castiel could hear Dean yell something obscene in the background.

"What happened?" asked the younger Winchester.

The angel gazed once more at the rubble surrounding him. "I think a building fell on me."

"Sorry. What?"

"There was a battle." The memories of it were still strangely hazy. He couldn't even recall what injuries had occurred during the fight and what had been caused by falling debris. "The building was too old. It couldn't handle the combined forces of heaven and hell."

Sam tone went from confusion to worry. "Are you okay?"

Castiel took a moment to truly assess his situation. His human body seemed to be riddled by a disturbing number of injuries. Bones were broken, tissues torn. Growing stains of blood covered his dusty clothes. But more importantly his legs were trapped. Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem. Normally, he could have just spread his wings and shifted his whole body to another location, even all the way to where Sam and Dean were. But at the moment, his wings felt like heavy weights and his grace was drained from the battle, the remains of it trying to keep his human body functioning.

"I believe I'm stuck," he said, a slight waver making its way into his voice against his will. "I can't move."

"What do you mean you're stuck? Can't you just…" Sam stopped when Castiel began coughing.

It took the angel by surprise too. The heavy weight in his chest combined with a nauseating tickle and automatically his body began to convulse trying to dispel a liquid from his lungs which Castiel realized somewhat worryingly was blood.

"Castiel?" Sam was calling anxiously. "Cas?"

There was a fumbling noise and different voice cried out, "Cas!"

"Dean," Castiel said when the coughing finally stopped surprised at how weak his voice had become.

"Where are you?" Dean asked again, this time more soft and pleading.

"An old abandoned research station," Castiel replied and gave some directions.

"How bad is it?"

The angel decided Dean didn't need to hear the long list of injuries. "Bad," he simply said.

"Hang on. We'll be there in a few hours." Cas heard Dean take a long, shaky breath. "Just… hang on, okay?"

"Okay."

Castiel continued to hold the phone to his ear for a few minutes after Dean hung up not quite willing to let go of the connection. Sighing, he tiredly slipped the phone back in his pocket and went back to looking at the stars. He was suddenly hit by the incredible silence and emptiness of his setting. The research station was very much in the middle of nowhere. It reminded him of the night he spent patiently waiting by the roadside while Dean slept. But this was different. Here he was weakened and trapped, and very much aware of how vulnerable he was. If any demon or angel were to come across him like this…

A sudden crack and a loud thud startled him. It caused every one of his muscles to jump in a much too human reaction. The sound was likely just some of the debris settling, nevertheless he attempted to sit up and look around. An increasingly sharp stab in his chest soon brought him down again. He couldn't sense anyone nearby, but he was unsure how reliable his senses were at the moment. From what he could recall, all but one of the angels had already been killed before the building fell. Hopefully, the last one had been killed by the collapse or had left assuming Castiel was dead. He fought off the growing empty feeling in his chest refusing to dwell on the fact that more of his siblings were now dead by his hands.

Settling in to wait, he took a deep breath only to find himself thrown into another coughing fit, the forced convulsions making his already painful injuries hurt even more. The sensation threatened to overwhelm him again. He clenched his fist in frustration cursing the fact his weakened state left him enslaved to his fragile human body. If he still had the power of heaven to call on, he could have blown away the fragment of wall that trapped him and healed his injuries instantly. Instead, he had to wait for aid, trapped in a fleshy shell that seemed to have a will of its own. Even now, his limbs trembled involuntarily.

A sudden understanding came to him pulled from knowledge he'd long ago been given but never needed. The minute shaking, the contraction of his muscles, the sharp firing of nerves on his skin.

He was cold.

He'd never been cold before. He'd understood the concept, but had never actually felt it. It was not pleasant. He wished he could curl in on himself to preserve what little heat he had. The little he was able to move only sent more bolts of pain through him.

More knowledge surfaced in his mind and he realized something else: he was losing too much blood. He could feel his heart beating much too quickly and his lungs gasping for air. His blood pressure was slowly dropping, his body going into shock.

With an awareness no human possessed, he focused inward examining each part of his borrowed anatomy. Beyond broken bones and scraped skin, he could feel the lacerated liver pushing fluid into his abdomen, the broken rib that had grazed against his lung. These injuries were dire.

The cold he felt on the outside couldn't compare with that he felt on the inside when he realized he would not survive until Dean arrived. Human bodies could only survive so much even those currently housing the soul of an angel. And soon this mortal body would fail.

Castiel knew he wouldn't really die this way. Not like he had died before, blown completely away into dark oblivion. Only his human body would die, but unlike a demon, he couldn't exist within a dead vessel and without a body, he couldn't stay in this realm for very long. Unless he found another immediately, he'd be forced to leave and there were only two places he could go: heaven or hell. Heaven would never let him return and hell would welcome him much too eagerly. Memories of when he'd searched through the inferno for Dean haunted his mind and his body shook with a shudder that had nothing to do with cold or blood loss.

The broken angel coughed and felt blood trickle down his chin as he continued to shiver. More memories surfaced in his weary mind, memories of Dean. Most seemed to involve the hunter yelling at him. An image of his friend's angry face suddenly appeared quite clearly in his mind. He could even hear him shouting.

'You're going to let yourself get squashed to death by a couple slabs of frigging concrete? You're supposed to be an angel for Christ's sake!'

Cas felt an irrational urge to argue with him even though he knew it was just a figment of his imagination. Even after everything they'd been through, the man remained a constant exasperation. But one thing he had always admired about Dean Winchester was his pigheaded determination. And maybe that was something he needed at that moment.

Diving deep within himself, he fled down to his heart, his true heart, his grace. He gathered all his remaining power and with a strength he thought he'd lost, focused all of it into the most grievous of his internal injuries. Ever so slowly, the tissues regenerated themselves and the blood was replenished. The power was soon used up, but it was enough.

All of his energy now gone, Castiel's mind spun, drifting back into a darkness that reminded him of death.

 ****

******

Castiel was woken by a familiar voice and a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to find the sun shinning high in the sky and Dean leaning over him with a relieved smile on his face. And for a moment, he couldn't decide which one was brighter.

"Hey, Cas."

"Hello, Dean," the angel replied his voice dry and weak.

Dean's smirk grew wider but concern was still obvious in the tightness around his eyes. "A building? Really, Cas? All of heaven and hell after you and a wall is what takes you down."

"Well, technically it was a wall brought down by the forces of heaven and hell," put in Sam. Castiel shifted his gaze and found the younger Winchester kneeling on his other side with his own reassuring smile. "He's just lucky he didn't get completely buried or he would have had to wait another four hours while we stole an excavator."

"I'll consider myself lucky then," was Castiel's hoarse reply, his dry throat making him cough.

Sam patted him on the shoulder. "Hold on, Cas. We'll have you free in a couple minutes."

Eyeing the surrounding rubble, Sam pulled free one of the metal supports and climbed up onto a pile of debris. Putting one end of the support under the slab that trapped the angel, he pressed down on the other end attempting to lever up the concrete.

Dean made himself ready situated behind Cas with his hands under the angel's arms. "Put your back into it, you pansy. We haven't got all day," he called to his brother.

Sam rolled his eyes, but didn't reply. Instead, he pushed down again using all his weight. With a harsh scrapping noise, the cement slowly began to rise. Dean didn't even wait for an inch of space to appear before he pulled Castiel free. Once Cas was clear, Sam let the wall go. It fell with a loud bang, cracking in two as it did so.

All three of them breathed a sigh of relief.

Jumping down, Sam knelt by Cas' legs to check the damage. "I don't think all of the weight was resting on you, so it shouldn't be too bad, but the left leg is definitely broken."

Sam gazed at Dean and raised his eyebrows. His brother returned the look and nodded. Castiel frowned as he glanced from one to the other, but before he could attempt to decipher the non-verbal communication, Sam grabbed the injured limb and pulled. Castiel's whole body jerked in reaction to the sudden burst of pain, but Dean's hands held him still. The world spun again and began to fade at the edges, but Castiel held on to the solid feeling of the hands on his shoulders.

"You still with us?"

When the world finally settled and he was able to focus on Dean's worried face, Cas managed to give a small nod.

"Jesus, Cas. You're a mess," said Dean gazing at the bloody injuries covering the angel. "Can't you use your mojo to fix you up?"

Castiel sighed and struggled to sit up only managing with the Winchesters' help. "Most of my 'mojo' was used up in the fight. I used what little I had left to heal my internal injuries, but I won't be able to heal the rest until my grace has had time to replenish."

"Don't worry. We'll fix you up," Dean reassured. "We happen to have a lot of experience in that area."

"So you're pretty much grounded then?" questioned Sam as the brothers carefully helped the angel to his feet. "No flying about until you're back to full power?"

"Yes." Castiel swayed slightly but they held him steady until the vertigo passed and he was able to balance himself on his good leg. He took a deep breath feeling relieved to simply be upright once more.

Dean smirked as the three slowly made their way to the Impala. "I guess that means you'll be stuck with us for a while then."

The corners of Castiel's lips turned up in a rare smile. "I can think of worse places to be."


End file.
